Lonesome Road may not be coming out this month, but if nothing else, fans of the latest entry in the Fallout franchise can console themselves with the very positive reception the latest DLC released, Old World Blues, is receiving.

In the end I knocked it down a little because yes, assets do get reused (no matter how imaginatively), it's very talky in parts (no matter how good the talking) and to be fair there will be Fallout players out there who will hate it just because it chucks realism and grittiness out the window. You will love it though if you chose the Weird Wasteland perk, loved the Vault filled with Garys in 3, or just don't mind playing through an extremely funny and well-written DLC pack that throws interesting surprises at you all the time, rewards exploration greatly, and packs more imagination and play-time in it than nearly every other full-priced game out there.

Fallout is at its best when you can talk characters around and manipulate the game to achieve your goals without killing anyone, but most of Old World Blues sees you desperately gunning down stupidly tough hordes of monsters and running away from gimpy super-humans.

No matter how interesting the locations, and their little backstories, Fallout isn't a shooter and the combat is unresponsive and annoying.

When you're shooting some bloke in the head five times and he's still running at you swinging a saw, it just gets stupid.

At times you can talk the characters around, negotiate with them and bully them, but it just isn't enough.

Old World Blues is very enjoyable, often hilarious, but less combat would have been better.

And finally, GamesRadar criticizes the aging engine but reckons that it doesn't hold back the great writing, 8/10.

Like any good story, it's the characters that make OWB a fun place to play around in, and these are better-written characters than any previous Bethesda Fallout, which are perfectly integrated into the Fallout ethos. It's like the writers at Obsidian made a careful study of all the Fallout minutia and built a believable set of quests and plot points around characters that were derived from that study. If you love the world of Fallout and would like to get more detail on the backstory and mechanics, you'll love OWB. But even if you're a casual fan of the series, or just someone looking for a quality RPG experience in general, you won't be disappointed. This is one DLC pack that does everything right hell, it's even got the challenge level and the number of hours it'll take to beat it (about 8) down perfectly. Money well spent.